Bashar al-Assad

Bashar Hafez al-Assad (born 11 September 1965) was the President of Syria from 2000. He was charged with war crimes for his use of chemical weapons against protesters during the Syrian Civil War.

Biography
Bashar al-Assad was the son of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and his wife Aniseh al-Assad, of Syrian Alawite descent. He joined the Syrian Army in 1988 and was a Marshal, commanding the Syrian Republican Guard until his father's death in 2000. That year, he became the President of Syria.

Bashar was similar to his father in that he was a dictator who brutally put down any unrest against his rule. In 2013, he used chemical weapons against Syrian protesters two years into the Syrian Civil War, using sarin gas to kill many people on the outskirts of Damascus. Al-Assad's authoritarian rule was challenged ever since 2011, but after the use of chemical weapons, many countries began to get involved. His rule was backed by Russia, who wanted to make use of (and protect) their naval base at Damascus; Iran, a fellow Shi'ite country that was also ruled by a dictator; and Hezbollah, Shi'a militants whose goal was to destroy Syria's enemy of Israel, while he faced opposition from the Free Syrian Army (and other opposition groups); the Islamist Al-Nusra Front/Al-Qaeda in Iraq; the United States, who were increasingly unwelcome in the Middle East; the Islamic State, who proclaimed that they were the new caliphate; and most of the Arab League, who had also gone through revolutions that turned them into democracies.

On 16 July 2014, al-Assad was re-elected as President of Syria in a rigged election judged as unfair.